During the last few years a new hobby has taken hold of me, that of collecting seeds. After I collect them, I scatter the seeds on a likely spot in my one-acre garden. As I walk, as I drive, my hobby obsesses me. What unlikely souvenir will I bring home to the garden today? “Souvenir” means “memory,” and the bringing home of souvenirs is an attempt to remember the places you’ve visited. There is a souvenir-like quality to the seeds I collect and the plants that grow from them. My wanderings are the thread and the seeds are the needle that stitch my garden to the places I love to visit.
Learning to See
To collect a seed, you need to be able to identify a plant, and you need to know whether the plant is desirable. Being pretty is not enough. It needs to be suited to the site of your garden. And unless you are absolutely sure that will play nice, it also needs to be native. It could turn out that a plant you like the look of is exotic and invasive. One misplaced seed contains the power to wreck an ecosystem. But, for me, the daily duty not to spread environmental disasters around is eclipsed by the thrill of being able to see a plant. To see the plants that cover a landscape as a rich, coherent tapestry instead of an undifferentiated mass feels like learning to read a new language, or a new kind of language.
When Elwin Ransom, the hero of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, arrives on the planet of Malacandra, he finds that he can’t make sense of anything that he sees. It is only as the hrossa, the poets of that world, teach him the words for things that he comes to see them clearly. It may sound counter-intuitive to say that words are prior to perception, but I have found it to be true. As soon as I learn a new species by name, I begin to see it here and there, and my enjoyment of the natural world increases.
Evelyn Waugh thought that aesthetic enjoyment consists mainly in “distinguishing among similars.” He points out that if you plucked an Australian from the bush and dropped him in London, he would be overwhelmed by the countless identical (to-him) Queen Anne, Georgian, Regency, and Victorian buildings (Waugh was writing before the ruin of vast swaths of London, first by German bombs and then by German architects), while a native Londoner could both see and understand the variety of styles and periods that comprise London’s neighborhoods: reading them like a history book in brick and stone. Conversely, if you transplanted the Londoner to the Outback, he would see monotonous desert, where the Australian could perceive a rich variety of plants and topography.
Once a landscape becomes visible and legible, walks and drives become more interesting. Of course, I have an interest of another kind, that of taking something from the landscape. And this kind of interest is partly self-serving. I could claim that I collect seeds for the garden. But it is after all my garden, and no gardener on this earth is free of vanity. Yet the desire to place one’s imprint on the clay of this earth is not intrinsically vane; it is a kind of sub-creation—to borrow Tolkien’s term—part of our yearning to act upon the creative urge placed within us by our Creator.
Remembering and Revisiting
Another aspect of my hobby is the necessity of “Remembering and Revisiting.” If I am walking along a trail or driving down a backroad and happen to notice a plant I wish were in my garden, I might have noticed it because it is blooming. If there are blooms it is unlikely that there are seeds yet, so I have to remember where I saw the plant and then revisit it occasionally to check for mature seeds. Once the plant has ceased to bloom, finding it again can become more difficult. Adding another layer to the challenge is that if I don’t yet know what a plant is, I might not be able (for the reason stated above) to remember exactly what it looks like. I might take a picture with a broad background, but I like to hike without my phone. Besides, trying to remember is kind of fun.
I recently became aware of a small, clumpy plant with thick, resinous, narrow leaves, small purple flowers and an intensely lemony scent. I know from the shape of the flowers and the squared stems that it is a member of lamiaceae, the mint and salvia family. But I don’t know the species, so it has entered neither my vocabulary nor, fully, my imagination.[1] I’ve seen it now in two places, and I think I can find it again, but I can’t be certain. I love the challenge. And I love the necessity of tracing and re-tracing my steps.
Like Wordsworth, the seed collector returns again and again to the same places, sometimes with “somewhat of a sad perplexity” while he searches for the plant he was certain was “right here!” (I have a picture of my parents on a small fishing boat. My dad is holding a rod and reel in one hand, looking back toward the camera, and pointing emphatically at a blank patch of lake water with the other. I don’t know for sure who else was on the boat or who took the picture, but my guess is that he is explaining to my uncle—one of his main fishing buddies—how sure he is that the brush pile they sank to attract crappie is “right here!” I remember endless debates about the precise locations of these obscured works of dedication to fishing. Thankfully, the challenge facing the seed collector is less daunting.) As in “Tintern Abbey,” the confusion produced by the confrontation between memory and the present reality is worth it. Landscapes give more pleasure when they are well known, and the better known they are, the easier they are carried along in the imagination, to become “food for future years.” Collecting seeds produces the thrill of the chase because plants, like the trees of Tolkien’s Old Forest, seem to shift. But it also produces the greater thrill of familiarity. And even along a path that is not merely worn but worn out, the Unknown can irrupt. Like rivers, landscapes are never the same twice, and visits at different seasons and different times of day reveal new things. Landscapes, like even the oldest friends, keep a few surprises in store.
The Paradox of Individual and Kind
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of the thisness, or individual essence, of each creature, as opposed to its mere whatness, or kind. Of course, in identifying a plant, its whatness is precisely what one is putting one’s finger on. But I have found that identifying a plant feels much more like apprehending its thisness. It is like suddenly recognizing someone in a crowd. The individual character of the species suddenly shines out to you.
In his book on fox hunting, Roger Scruton noticed the paradox of kind and individual where wild animals are concerned. While you chase a particular fox, he acquires an identity not in the way that person would, by being herself, but by temporarily ceasing to be a fox and becoming The Fox. I think something similar happens with plants. I don’t mean to dismiss Hopkin’s notion that a particular tree or a particular bird has its own essence. We have all seen an old, gnarled tree and remarked that it has its own “character,” what Hopkins would call “inscape.” But each species also has a character of its own, and this character is transferable. At any time, a shin oak can become The Shin Oak, and, so, around any corner, one can unexpectedly run into a friend.
Losing Control
Back home, throwing the seeds into the dirt sometimes feels like throwing them into an abyss. Over the last eight years, I’ve scattered seeds of many species that I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of since. But then there is the joy of the sudden appearance of a plant whose seeds I scattered so long ago that I forgot I did it. I love the feeling of accomplishment (admittedly it is a strange and somewhat vicarious kind of accomplishment) that comes from a day of planting, that feeling is rivaled by that which comes from seeing nature look after herself, with just the lightest touch of help. Speaking practically, the plants that germinated in place will never need any help, unlike those planted, which, at least in Texas, will need care for at least a year, and perhaps throughout their lives. In a state where water scarcity is unexceptional, it is clear to me which method is better. And easier.
This physical ease comes with the spiritual discipline of loosening your grip. Instead of controlling your garden, you guide it, coax it, and tend to it within the bounds of what it offers. As the world veers towards disaster, it seems clear to me that this is the way to proceed with gardening. Using water we don’t have and poisons we can’t live with to create landscapes we can’t sustain is untenable.
But the moral dimension of this letting go transcends the environmental dimension. In all areas of life, not just in our gardens, we must learn to let go. Ultimately, we must let go of our lives. And at the same time we must foster the virtue of hope. We must hope that our lives will become the seeds that live because we let them fall to their deaths, and the same is true of our gardens. Do I still buy plants? Yes. And I try to arrange them so that they please me. I still have a long way to go. But in the meantime, the garden is a good practice-ground for life.
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